From Records to Films: Richard Foos Returns to Where it Started
Richard Foos is a producer, entrepreneur, entertainment visionary, and one of the co-founders of Shout! Factory. On Jan. 23, he visited Whittier College and held a seminar in Hoover Hall room 100 where he answered questions about his work and the film industry at large. At the beginning of his talk, he explained how he has been in the entertainment business for 40 years. Despite having worked in the business for a long time, like most other people, he had to start somewhere.
Foos attended Whittier College for the first two years of his college career, claiming it to be a great social experience. However, at the time, the College did not have the resources for the career he wanted to pursue. He was eventually accepted into a semester-long program at USC that focused on a study of the inner city and latin arts. He eventually ended up stuck not knowing what to do.
It was not until he went to the La Mirada Swap Meet, where he saw a booth selling records, that he figured out what he wanted to do. After finding out where they were selling the records– a store in Hollywood called Aron’s Records — Foos went over and bought everything, including the entire business for $2, eventually calling it Rhino Records. They began selling records from artists who were no longer in print, starting with music from the 60s. They became licensed by Universal Music to do this. This eventually led to his current career of owning the distribution rights to many old films. Most recently, Foos gained the rights to many of Jim Henson’s films.
In the 2000s, the music industry began to blast off, so they made the decision to only focus on films, expanding that part of their business.
Of course, with so much success comes some bumps in the road, and he recounted specific times from when they started Rhino Records. They were just putting things out “willy nilly.” They would let many punk bands slip through their hands, but one of his biggest misses was Weird Al Yankovich. Yankovich sent them a tape he had recorded from his dorm bathroom, and “I just thought it was a little juvenile,” Foos recounts. Yankovich was later discovered by Doctor Demento and started to get big. Rhino Records was not fast enough to get him back, and he was eventually signed to another record company.
Even though he works within the entertainment industry, he has some complicated feelings towards it. He is very passionate about what he does. “I’ve always been a pop culture fanatic,” he said, speaking of his love for films, but he tends to lean more towards music.
Foos has been a part of the entertainment industry for a long time, and he has noticed the changes within it and what has stayed the same over time. Just as it was before with the records, he states that people, despite streaming, still enjoy having a physical copy: “Amazingly enough, vinyl has seen some unbelievable growth, DVDs stayed the same […] there’s people who still like the physical — plus you get the extras.” Most of the work he does now is buying the distribution rights for certain films — more so with independent producers — such as the Jim Henson company. Still, Foos is not deterred by streaming, oftentimes doing great business with platforms like Roku and Amazon.
One of his most recent endeavors was producing a documentary called Born in Chicago, a story about the first generation of Blues performers from Chicago in the 1960s.
Some advice he would give to young filmmakers is to “find a [big city] that isn’t LA, and come to LA later.” He speaks of his son, who created a short film comedy centering a transgender protagonist, creating a film in a niche that is not as populated. But one that always works, he says, is low budget horror. “Even if it fails, it doesn’t matter […] as long as it’s well done.” And finally, he says to do anything you can to get an internship to boost your morale and get ahead within the industry.
Photo Courtesy Michael Haering
